De Tweede Wereldoorlog zal verdwijnen met mijn generatie. Eens in de vijf jaar word ik geïnterviewd samen met Jan Blokker en Harry Mulisch. Dan gaat het, onvermijdelijk, veel over de oorlog. Die is ons referentiekader. Zoals ik altijd wanneer ik met lijn 9 in Amsterdam langs de Hollandse Schouwburg kom, moet denken aan de gruwelijke tocht die daar begon voor de joden. Gelukkig is er weer meer aandacht voor de plekken die ons herinneren aan de oorlog, zoals de brandgrens die sinds enkele jaren geleden in Rotterdam herinnert aan het bombardement op 14 mei 1940. En de barakken die teruggaan naar Westerbork. Wat een onhistorische onzin dat die ooit zijn weggehaald. Maar onze erfenis zal onherroepelijk verdwijnen. Alles wat we hebben meegemaakt en wat we hebben opgeschreven wordt legende, een zwart-witfoto. Niemand die het nog kan vertellen.
Henk Hofland. Oorlogstiener: In de oorlog heeft onze generatie zichzelf opgevoed. 3 mei 2013
Beginnings, it's said, are apt to be shadowy. So it is with this story, which starts with the emergence of a new species maybe two hundred thousand years ago. The species does not yet have a name—nothing does—but it has the capacity to name things.
As with any young species, this one's position is precarious. Its numbers are small, and its range restricted to a slice of eastern Africa. Slowly its population grows, but quite possibly then it contracts again—some would claim nearly fatally—to just a few thousand pairs.
The members of the species are not particularly swift or strong or fertile. They are, however, singularly resourceful. Gradually they push into regions with different climates, different predators, and different prey. None of the usual constraints of habitat or geography seem to check them. They cross rivers, plateaus, mountain ranges. In coastal regions, they gather shellfish; farther inland, they hunt mammals. Everywhere they settle, they adapt and innovate. On reaching Europe, they encounter creatures very much like themselves, but stockier and probably brawnier, who have been living on the continent far longer. They interbreed with these creatures and then, by one means or another, kill them off.
The end of this affair will turn out to be exemplary. As the species expands its range, it crosses paths with animals twice, ten, and even twenty times its size: huge cats, towering bears, turtles as big as elephants, sloths that stand fifteen feet tall. These species are more powerful and often fiercer. But they are slow to breed and are wiped out.
Although a land animal, our species—ever inventive—crosses the sea. It reaches islands inhabited by evolution's outliers: birds that lay foot-long eggs, pig-sized hippos, giant skinks. Accustomed to isolation, these creatures are ill-equipped to deal with the newcomers or their fellow travelers (mostly rats). Many of them, too, succumb.
The process continues, in fits and starts, for thousands of years, until the species, no longer so new, has spread to practically every corner of the globe. At this point, several things happen more or less at once that allow Homo sapiens, as it has come to call itself, to reproduce at an unprecedented rate. In a single century the population doubles; then it doubles again, and then again. Vast forests are razed. Humans do this deliberately, in order to feed themselves. Less deliberately, they shift organisms from one continent to another, reassembling the biosphere.
Meanwhile, an even stranger and more radical transformation is under way. Having discovered subterranean reserves of energy, humans begin to change the composition of the atmosphere. This, in turn, alters the climate and the chemistry of the oceans. Some plants and animals adjust by moving. They climb mountains and migrate toward the poles. But a great many—at first hundreds, then thousands, and finally perhaps millions—find themselves marooned. Extinction rates soar, and the texture of life changes.
No creature has ever altered life on the planet in this way before, and yet other, comparable events have occurred. Very, very occasionally in the distant past, the planet has undergone change so wrenching that the diversity of life has plummeted. Five of these ancient events were catastrophic enough that they're put in their own category: the so-called Big Five. In what seems like a fantastic coincidence, but is probably no coincidence at all, the history of these events is recovered just as people come to realize that they are causing another one. When it is still too early to say whether it will reach the proportions of the Big Five, it becomes known as the Sixth Extinction.
Afgezien van de Amerikaanse oorlog in Vietnam en de aanval van de Sovjet-Unie op Afghanistan is de Koude Oorlog, van 1949 tot 1989, misschien wel de vreedzaamste periode die de moderne mensheid gekend heeft. De diepste oorzaak daarvan is de kernbom.
Henk Hofland. De Groene Amsterdammer. 19 februari 2014
Voor de intelligentsia zou moeten gelden dat taal de gedachten scherpt. Enkele synoniemen van 'vreedzaam' zijn 'sereen, vredelievend, rustig, vredig.' Is de periode waarin de basis werd gelegd voor de 'sixth extinction,' werkelijk 'vredig' te noemen? Het lijkt mij niet, de voortdurende staat van oorlog met de natuur getuigt van een absurd antropocentrisch wereldbeeld, de mens als maat aller dingen. Volgende vraag: is 'de Koude Oorlog, van 1949 tot 1989, misschien wel' de meest 'serene, vredelievende, vredige' tijdperk van 'de moderne mensheid' geweest? Zo ja, wat betekent dit?
1. Allereerst is de bewering over de 'vreedzaamste periode' volstrekt onjuist, tenzij de inwoners van Nigeria, Cambodja, Somalië, Bangladesh, Algerije, Angola, Eritrea, Zimbabwe, Zuid-Afrika, Côte d'Ivoire, Guinea, Chad, Uganda, Kenia, Congo-Brazzaville, Centraal Afrikaanse Republiek, Senegal-Casamance, Westelijke Sahara, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Madagaskar, Chili, Argentinië, Brazilië, Oost-Timor, Soedan, Congo-Léopoldville, Guatemala en andere Latijns-Amerikaanse landen niet tot de mensheid behoren, want in deze landen vonden massamoorden plaats waarbij in totaal vele miljoenen burgers om het leven kwamen. Alleen geredeneerd vanuit het eurocentrische wereldbeeld van een blanke man uit het christelijk avondland, die zelfs de onafhankelijkheidsstrijd tegen de koloniale mogendheden buiten beschouwing laat, klopt Hoflands opmerking. Zijn bewering zegt dus meer over Hoflands ideologische kijk op de realiteit dan over de werkelijkheid zelf.
2. Hoflands 'kernbom' als 'diepste oorzaak' van de door hem beweerde 'sereniteit' van de 'Koude Oorlog.' Nu de feiten: tijdens de Cuba Crisis werd op 27 oktober 1962 de hele mensheid gered door het beheerste optreden van één enkele Sovjet-officier aan boord van een B-59 onderzeeboot, uitgerust met nucleaire wapens, voor de kust van het zuiden van de VS. De gebeurtenissen aan boord van de Sovjet-onderzeeër werden naderhand door de vooraanstaande Amerikaanse historicus Arthur Schlessinger beschreven als
not only the most dangerous moment of the Cold War. It was the most dangerous moment in human history.
Terwijl de B-59 door de Amerikaanse marine werd bestookt met dieptebommen, waarvan enkele niet ver van de romp van de onderzeeboot tot ontploffing kwamen. Gedwongen lang onder water te blijven gebeurde het volgende:
The temperature rose sharply, especially inside the submarine's engine room. The ship went dark, with only emergency lights continuing to function. Carbon dioxide in the air reached near-lethal levels. People could barely breathe. 'One of the duty officers fainted and fell down. Then another one followed, then the third one… They were falling like dominoes. But we were still holding on, trying to escape. We were suffering like this for about four hours.' Then 'the Americans hit us with something stronger… We thought — that's it — the end.'
Panic ensued. Commander Valentin Savitsky tried unsuccessfully to reach the general staff. He then ordered the officer in charge of the nuclear torpedo to prepare it for battle and shouted. 'Maybe the war has already started up there, while we are doing somersaults here. We're going to blast them now! We will die, but we will sink them all — we will not disgrace our Navy.' Savitsky turned to the other two officers aboard for their approval. One agreed, but political officer Vasili Arkhipov refused to launch, single-handedly preventing nuclear war,
aldus het relaasin The Untold History of the United Statesvan de Amerikaanse filmmaker Oliver Stone en de historicus professor Peter Kuznick, directeur van de Nuclear Studies Institute at American University.
The man who saved the world: The Soviet submariner who single-handedly averted WWIII at height of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Averted war: Vasili Arkhipoy saved the world by single-handedly averting World War Three with one decision 50 years ago, yet he died humiliated, outcast and an unknown
De toenmalige Amerikaanse minister van Defensie Robert McNamara vroeg zich tijdens de crisis af of hij 'would live to see another Saturday night' en Dino Brugioni, lid van het CIA-team dat de wapenopbouw bespioneerde, zag geen andere uitweg dan 'war and complete destruction.' Zowel de Amerikaanse als Sovjet elite beseften dat er een proces op gang was gekomen dat zijn eigen dynamiek kende en derhalve door niemand kon worden beheerst. In zijn memoires, die in 1970 uitkwamen,
Khrushchev claimed that Robert Kennedy's message was even more desperate. 'Even though the President himself is very much against starting the war over Cuba, an irreversible chain of events could occur against his will,' he warned. 'If the situation continues much longer, the President is not sure that the military will not overthrow him and seize power. The American army could get out of control.'
Stone en Kuznick in The Untold History of the United States:
U.S. Military leaders were furious when the crisis ended without an attack on Cuba. On several occasions, they had as much as accused Kennedy of cowardice for resisting their recommendations. McNamara recalled their bitterness at a meeting with Kennedy the day after the Soviets agreed to remove their missiles: 'The President invited the chiefs to thank them for their support during the crisis, and there was one hell of a scene. Curtis LeMay came out saying, 'We lost. We ought to just go in there today and knock 'em off.'
Als Chef Staf van de Amerikaanse Luchtmacht had LeMay onmiddellijk gesteld:
The Russian bear has alway been eager to stick his paw in Latin American waters. Now we've got him in a trap, let's take his leg off right up to his testicles. On second thought, let's take off his testicles, too.'
President Kennedy 'was shaken by LeMay's cavalier attitude toward the possibility of nuclear was.' Het was dezelfde Curtis LeMay over wie minister van Defensie Robert McNamara verklaarde dat die na 1945 had gezegd:
'If we'd lost the war, we'd all have been prosecuted as war criminals.' And I think he's right. He, and I'd say I, were behaving as war criminals. LeMay recognized that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side had lost. But what makes it immoral if you lose and notimmoral if you win?
In de met een Oscar bekroonde documentaire The Fog of War (2003) stelde McNamara de vraag:
Why was it necessary to drop the nuclear bomb if LeMay was burning up Japan? And he went on from Tokyo to firebomb other cities. 58% of Yokohama. Yokohama is roughly the size of Cleveland. 58% of Cleveland destroyed. Tokyo is roughly the size of New York. 51% percent ofNew York destroyed. 99% of the equivalent of Chattanooga, which was Toyama. 40% of the equivalent of Los Angeles, which was Nagoya. This wasall done before the dropping of the nuclear bomb, which by the way wasdropped by LeMay's command. Proportionality should be a guideline in war. Killing 50% to 90% of the people of 67 Japanese cities and then bombing them with two nuclear bombs is not proportional, in the minds of some people, to the objectives we were trying to achieve.
Hoge militairen als Curtis LeMay handelen als gewetenloze psychopaten en daarvan was de oud-opperbevelhebber van de Geallieerde Strijdkrachten in Europa, Dwight Eisenhower, zicht bewust. Tijdens zijn afscheidsspeech als Amerikaanse president in 1961 sprak Eisenhower dan ook uit ervaring toen hij waarschuwde voor de militarisering van de Amerikaanse samenleving als gevolg van
the growing power of the military-industrial complex in American life. Most people know the term the president popularized, but few remember his argument.
In his farewell address, Eisenhower called for a better equilibrium between military and domestic affairs in our economy, politics and culture. He worried that the defense industry’s search for profits would warp foreign policy and, conversely, that too much state control of the private sector would cause economic stagnation. He warned that unending preparations for war were incongruous with the nation’s history. He cautioned that war and warmaking took up too large a proportion of national life, with grave ramifications for our spiritual health.
Aaron B. O'Connell, 'an assistant professor of history at the United States Naval Academy and a Marine reserve officer, author of Underdogs: The Making of the Modern Marine Corps' schreef hierover in de New York Times van 5 november 2012:
Eisenhower’s least heeded warning — concerning the spiritual effects of permanent preparations for war — is more important now than ever. Our culture has militarized considerably since Eisenhower’s era, and civilians, not the armed services, have been the principal cause. From lawmakers’ constant use of 'support our troops' to justify defense spending, to TV programs and video games like 'NCIS,' 'Homeland' and 'Call of Duty,' to NBC’s shameful and unreal reality show 'Stars Earn Stripes,' Americans are subjected to a daily diet of stories that valorize the military while the storytellers pursue their own opportunistic political and commercial agendas. Of course, veterans should be thanked for serving their country, as should police officers, emergency workers and teachers. But no institution — particularly one financed by the taxpayers — should be immune from thoughtful criticism.
Like all institutions, the military works to enhance its public image, but this is just one element of militarization. Most of the political discourse on military matters comes from civilians, who are more vocal about 'supporting our troops' than the troops themselves. It doesn’t help that there are fewer veterans in Congress today than at any previous point since World War II. Those who have served are less likely to offer unvarnished praise for the military, for it, like all institutions, has its own frustrations and failings. But for non-veterans — including about four-fifths of all members of Congress — there is only unequivocal, unhesitating adulation. The political costs of anything else are just too high…
Eisenhower understood the trade-offs between guns and butter. 'Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed,' he warned in 1953, early in his presidency. 'The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.'
He also knew that Congress was a big part of the problem. (In earlier drafts, he referred to the 'military-industrial-Congressional' complex, but decided against alienating the legislature in his last days in office.) Today, there are just a select few in public life who are willing to question the military or its spending, and those who do — from the libertarian Ron Paul to the leftist Dennis J. Kucinich — are dismissed as unrealistic.
The fact that both President Obama and Mitt Romney are calling for increases to the defense budget (in the latter case, above what the military has asked for) is further proof that the military is the true 'third rail' of American politics. In this strange universe where those without military credentials can’t endorse defense cuts, it took a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Adm. Mike Mullen, to make the obvious point that the nation’s ballooning debt was the biggest threat to national security.
Uncritical support of all things martial is quickly becoming the new normal for our youth. Hardly any of my students at the Naval Academy remember a time when their nation wasn’t at war. Almost all think it ordinary to hear of drone strikes in Yemen or Taliban attacks in Afghanistan. The recent revelation of counterterrorism bases in Africa elicits no surprise in them, nor do the military ceremonies that are now regular features at sporting events. That which is left unexamined eventually becomes invisible, and as a result, few Americans today are giving sufficient consideration to the full range of violent activities the government undertakes in their names.
Were Eisenhower alive, he’d be aghast at our debt, deficits and still expanding military-industrial complex. And he would certainly be critical of the 'insidious penetration of our minds' by video game companies and television networks, the news media and the partisan pundits. With so little knowledge of what Eisenhower called the 'lingering sadness of war' and the 'certain agony of the battlefield,' they have done as much as anyone to turn the hard work of national security into the crass business of politics and entertainment.
De vanzelfsprekendheid waarmee de Amerikaanse Congresleden meer dan een halve eeuw na Eisenhower's waarschuwing, met het oog op toekomstige oorlogen tegen bezuinigingen op het militair industrieel complex zijn, weerspiegelde zich ook in de woorden van mainstream-opiniemaker Henk Hofland, toen hij in 2009 beweerde dat
Hoog op de lijst blijft Iran. Werkt het aan een kernwapen of niet? Israël blijft ervan overtuigd dat dat zo is. Daarom moet in toenemende mate rekening worden gehouden met een preventief ingrijpen, dat wil zeggen een bombardement zoals dat van 1981 op de kerninstallaties van Saddam Hoessein,
of toen hij op 12 maart 2014 weemoedig opmerkte dat 'In Europa en Amerika eerzucht en strijdlust verloren [zijn] gegaan.' Wanneer Hofland in 2013 onder de kop 'De volgende oorlog' met een vanzelfsprekendheid schreef over de Amerikaanse'vernietigende stok achter de deur' is duidelijk dat we te maken met iemand die, als een kleine gewetenloze Napoleon, op geen enkele manier de consequenties van zijn woorden beseft. In zijn logica mag het Westen datgene doenwat het niet-Westen niet mag. Hoe kan dat? Zijn houding komt voort, net als bij de meeste mainstream-opiniemakers, uit het feit dat Hofland aan een psychologische stoornis lijdt, die in de vakliteratuur cognitieve dissonantie heet.
Cognitieve dissonantie is een psychologische term voor de onaangename spanning die ontstaat bij het kennis nemen van feiten of opvattingen die strijdig zijn met een eigen overtuiging of mening, of bij gedrag dat strijdig is met de eigen overtuiging, waarden en normen. Het gaat met andere woorden om de perceptie van onverenigbaarheid tussen twee cognities, waarbij het woord cognitie kan slaan op kennis, houding, emotie, geloof of gedrag. Volgens de theorie voelen mensen een sterke drang om dissonanties te verkleinen door hun opvattingen of gedrag aan te passen of te rationaliseren.
Kortom, wat we bij Hofland en zijn mainstream-publiek zien is het verschijnsel dat ‘when two beliefs are inconsistent dissonance is created and thus fear, which has to be neutralized by denial of the facts.’
Zoals Walter Benjamin vlak voor zijn dood in Thesis on the Philosophy of History (1939) stelde:
In every era the attempt must be made anew to wrest tradition away from a conformism that is about to overpower it.
Het Westen kan zich vandaag de dag de waanzin van de ernstige cognitieve dissonantie, waaraan de economische en politieke macht lijdt, niet meer permitteren, wat de Hoflanden in de mainstream pers ook mogen beweren. De tijd is definitief voorbij dat George Kennan, de architect van de westerse containment-politiek, in 1948 als hoofd van het Planning-bureau van het Amerikaanse ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken de Amerikaanse machthebbers nog kon adviseren:
Wij hebben ongeveer 50 procent van de rijkdommen in de wereld, maar slechts 6,3 procent van haar bevolking… In deze omstandigheden zullen we niet in staat zijn te voorkomen dat wij het voorwerp worden van jaloezie en haat. Onze werkelijke taak in het komende tijdperk is om een netwerk van betrekkingen op te bouwen die ons in staat stelt deze positie van ongelijkheid te handhaven… Daartoe zullen we alle sentimentaliteit en dagdromen opzij moeten zetten en dient onze aandacht overal geconcentreerd te zijn op onze directe nationale doelstellingen… We moeten ophouden te spreken over vage en… imaginaire doelstellingen als mensenrechten, het verhogen van de levensstandaard, en democratisering. De dag is niet veraf dat we in pure machtsconcepten moeten handelen. Hoe minder we daarbij gehinderd worden door idealistische slogans, des te beter het is.’
Hoewel de oude garde nog steeds meent dat Koude Oorlogsretoriek voldoende is om de westerse hegemonie te garanderen, is het superioriteitsgevoel van de westerse elite lachwekkende geworden, zoals ondermeer Vassilis K. Fouskas en Bülent Gökay in het 2012 verschenen boek The Fall Of The US Empire. Global Fault-Lines and the Shifting Imperial Order (2012) gedocumenteerd aantoonden:
This book has argued that the international political economy of the US empire has been in a continuous decline since the late 1960s, and that its new policies of globalization/financialization and neoliberalism – what we have labeled as financial statecraft… -- have failed to arrest this decline. In the 1960s and 1970s the sterling-dollar bloc was outcompeted by Japan and West Germany; in the 1990s and 2000s by China and other emerging political economies. At the roots of this problem stands the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, resulting in the outsourcing of manufacturing and labour-power, as well as the migration from industry to ‘haute finance’. Thus, as we have shown, financialization and neoliberalism are great vulnerabilities, especially in the context of US and UK financial systems and political economies: they have proved to have little contact with the real economy and development, let alone green development and growth.
Apparently, Western capitalism has found no empirical/political ways to escape its structural crises of over-accumulation, theoretically analyzed by Marx in Capital. Further, as we have maintained, US neo-imperialism, via its ‘shock therapy’ East European policy, failed to appropriate enough international value from the collapsing socialist markets to restore its profitability and industrial might.
Een imperium dat anno 2014 meer dan 17 biljoen dollar schuld heeft (1 biljoen is een miljoen maal een miljoen) en alleen kan bestaan door elke dag weer 2,7 miljard dollar te lenen van onder andere de opkomende grootmacht China, heeft zijn langste tijd als supermacht gehad. De gezaghebbende Amerikaanse journalist Chris Hedges schreef in het in 2012 verschenen boek Days of Destruction. Days of Revolt, waarvan de illustraties door Joe Sacco werden gemaak:
We wanted to show in words and drawings what life looks like when the marketplace rules without constraints, where human beings and the natural world are used and then discarded to maximize profit. We wanted to look at what the ideology of unfettered capitalism means for families, communities, workers and the ecosystem.
The rise of corporatism began with the industrial revolution, westward expansion, and the genocide carried out in the name of progress and Western civilization against Native Americans. It does not denote simply an economic system but an ideology, a way of looking and dealing with each other and the world around us. This ideology embraces the belief that societies and cultures can be regenerated through violence. It glorifies profit and wealth. This is why we went to Pine Ridge, South Dakota. It was there that the disease of empire and American exceptionalism took root. The belief that we have a divine right to resources, land, and power, and a right to displace and kill others to obtain personal and national wealth, has left in its wake a trail of ravaged landscapes and incalculable human suffering, not only in Pine Ridge but across the country and the planet. What was done to Native Americans was the template. It would be done to people in the Philippines, Cuba, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and it is now finally done to us. This tyranny and exploitation have become our own.
Dat die feiten door de polderpers worden genegeerd, illustreert alleen hoe gevaarlijk diep de 'cognitieve dissonantie' hier verankerd is. Een 'Amerika-deskundige' als Geert Mak kan in zijn boek Reizen zonder John. Op zoek naar Amerika (2012) beweren dat de 'Amerikaanse politiek'lange tijd'sterk antikolonialistisch' [bleef],' en Henk Hofland kan blijven volhouden dat 'het Westen [vredestichtend]' is, maar dat kan alleen in Nederland waar de zelfbenoemde 'politiek-literaire elite' gecorrumpeerd zijn geraakt door het poldermodel. In het buitenland worden ze als lichtgewichten weggehoond. Daar worden intellectuelen als Fouskas en Gökay, niet gehinderd door de mainstream-hersenspoeling, en schreven in The Fall Of The US Empire. Global Fault-Lines and the Shifting Imperial Order:
This study distinguishes three… developments and considers them as being the key vulnerabilities not only of the US empire-state, but of all new rising and aspiring global powers:
· A historically unusual and complicated type of globalization (for example, pension funds in Texas and Montana hold Greek debt…).
· The world is on the verge of environmental catastrophe (for example, the climate change problem).
· The finite nature of raw materials is in full swing...
These three observable developments are systemic. The explosive growth of the financial system relative to manufacturing and the economy as a whole, and the proliferation of speculative and destabilizing financial instruments of parasitic wealth accumulation, have shattered the Anglo-American heartland. Eventually, however, this vulnerability is becoming manifest in the West, but it should not be surprising if it appears in the global East too, in the event that it adopts similar instruments and methods for dealing with a possible crisis of profitability in its industrial sector in the future.
In terms of their long-term effects, the greatest vulnerabilities of the world system as a whole are probably resource depletion and environmental degradation. The availability and distribution of critical resources such as oil, food and water, and the continuing degradation of the ecosystem at least from the 1970s onwards, speak volumes about the inability of the ruling classes around the world to control the discursive structural powers of global fault-lines.
Hoewel de bestseller-auteur in de polder, Geert Mak, beweert dat
De Amerikaanse softpower is… nog altijd sterk aanwezig… Soft power is, in de kern, de overtuigingskracht van een staat, de kracht om het debat naar zich toe te trekken, om de agenda van de wereldpolitiek te bepalen.
wees al veertien jaar eerder, in 1998, de Uruguayaanse auteur van wereldnaam Eduardo Galeano in zijn boek Ondersteboven op het volgende:
De door de modellen van de consumptiemaatschappij opgelegde culturele gelijkschakeling kan niet tot statistieken worden herleid. De economische gelijkschakeling, daarentegen, is wel meetbaar en deze meting wordt verricht door de Wereldbank, die zoveel voor die gelijkschakeling doet, en wordt bevestigd door de verschillende organisaties van de Verenigde Naties. De wereldeconomie is nooit minder democratisch geweest, nooit is de wereld zo schandalig onrechtvaardig geweest. In 1960 bezat twintig procent van de mensheid, het rijkste deel, dertig keer zoveel als de armste twintig procent. In 1990 was het verschil zestig keer zo groot. Sindsdien is de schaar alleen maar verder opengegaan: in 2000 was het opgelopen tot negentig keer.
Volgens het United Nations Development Program… hebben 447 multimiljonairs een fortuin dat groter is dan het jaarinkomen van de helft van de mensheid. De directeur van deze instelling van de Verenigde Naties, James Gustave Speth, verklaarde in 1997 dat het aantal rijken in de wereld in de afgelopen halve eeuw was verdubbeld, maar dat het aantal armen was verdrievoudigd en dat zestienhonderd miljoen mensen het slechter hebben dan vijftien jaar eerder…
in ieder land wordt het onrecht gereproduceerd dat de betrekkingen tussen de landen bepaalt en wordt de kloof tussen wie alles hebben en wie niets hebben jaar na jaar steeds breder. Op het Amerikaanse continent weten wij dat heel goed. In het noorden, in de Verenigde Staten, beschikten de rijken een halve eeuw geleden over twintig procent van het nationaal inkomen. Nu is dat veertig procent…
Intussen claimt het NAVO door middel van de inzet van massaal geweld op te komen voor democratie en mensenrechten en steunt het tegelijkertijd Israel dat ongestoord doorgaat met het uitbreiden van de talloze illegale Joodse nederzettingen op Palestijns gebied en met de militaire terreur tegen de Palestijnse bevolking. De ‘Joodse staat’ wordt voor het permanent schenden van het internationaal recht beloond met zelfs een de facto lidmaatschap van de NAVO, aangezien met kernwapens uitgeruste onderzeeboten van Israel deelnemen aan NAVO-oefeningen. In 2013 wordt werd tevens bekend gemaakt dat:
NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen received Israel’s president Shimon Peres at NATO headquarters in Brussels on March 7.
The order of the day: to enhance military cooperation between Israel and the Atlantic Alliance focusing on issues of counter-terrorism.
'Israel will be happy to share the knowledge it has gained and its technological abilities with NATO. Israel has experience in contending with complex situations, and we must strengthen the cooperation so we can fight global terror together and assist NATO with the complex threats it faces including in Afghanistan.'
Israel is already involved in covert operations and non-conventional warfare in liaison with the US and NATO.
Deze levensgevaarlijke politiek is tot stand gekomen zonder enige democratische besluitvorming in de aangesloten landen en zonder enige publieke discussie in de mainstream media. Op deze wijze is het Westen in de toekomst in feite verplicht met geweld te reageren wanneer de terreur van de bevriende zionistische staat beantwoord zal worden met contra-terreur, want
NATO's Strategic Concept recognizes the risks to the Alliance posed by terrorism. Article 5 is at the basis of a fundamental principle of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It provides that if a NATO Ally is the victim of an armed attack, each and every other member of the Alliance will consider this act of violence as an armed attack against all members and will take the actions it deems necessary to assist the Ally attacked. This is the principle of collective defense.
De macht, die onrecht uitoefent en ervan leeft, zweet geweld uit al haar poriën. In de hel van de krottenwijken loeren de zwarte veroordeelden, schuldig aan hun armoede en met een erfelijke neiging tot misdaad: de reclame doet hen watertanden en de politie verjaagt hen van tafel. Het systeem weigert wat het aanbiedt, magische artikelen die dromen in werkelijkheid omzetten, door de tv beloofde luxe, neonreclames die in de nacht van de stad het paradijs aankondigen, pracht en praal van de virtuele rijkdom: zoals de eigenaren van de echte rijkdom heel goed weten is er geen valium genoeg om zoveel verlangen te stillen en ook niet genoeg prozac om zoveel kwelling te sussen. Gevangenis en kogels vormen de therapie voor de armen.
Tot twintig jaar geleden was armoede het product van onrechtvaardigheid. Links klaagde het aan, het midden gaf het toe, rechts ontkende het zelden. In korte tijd zijn de tijden erg veranderd: nu is armoede de terechte straf voor inefficiëntie. Armoede mag dan medelijden opwekken, maar brengt geen verontwaardiging meer teweeg: er zijn armen door de regels van het spel of de onafwendbaarheid van het lot. Ook is geweld niet de dochter van het onrecht. De dominante taal, in serie geproduceerde beelden en woorden, werkt bijna altijd ten dienste van een systeem van beloning en straf, dat het leven opvat als een meedogenloze race tussen enkele winnaars en vele voor het verlies geboren verliezers.
Maar dat wordt in al talen verzwegen door broodschrijvers als Henk Hofland en Geert Mak. Hun krankzinnigheid heeft ze roem en rijkdom opgeleverd. Waarom zouden ze die inleveren, en voor wat? Erst kommt das Fressen und dann wieder das Fressen, maar dat kon Bertolt Brecht zich nog niet voorstellen. De krankzinnigen weten ons elke keer weer te verbijsteren. En dat komt omdat hun denkwijze geen logica kent. Het geloof in de neoliberale kapitalistische ideologie is een vorm van metafysisch denken.
Meliorism is an idea in metaphysical thinking holding that progress is a real concept leading to an improvement of the world. It holds that humans can, through their interference with processes that would otherwise be natural, produce an outcome which is an improvement over the aforementioned natural one.
Naast de economische noodzaak van interventies ligt ook het in wezen religieuze concept van meliorisme ten grondslag aan zowel het Amerikaanse exceptionalisme als zijn gewelddadig expansionisme. De Amerikaanse historicus Walter A. McDougall schreef in zijn studie Promised Land. Crusader State (1998) met betrekking tot dit begrip:
Meliorism assumes that the United States alone possesses the power, prestige, technology, wealth, and altruism needed to reform whole nations. It assumes that the U.S. government, having tamed its frontier and helped its people achieve unprecedented wealth and freedom… having led the free world to victory over fascism and Communism, knows how to deploy its assets to lift up the poor and oppressed. Finally, it assumes that Americans want their government to dedicate their lives fortunes, and sacred honor to that purpose.
None of these postulates is proven; in fact, every one may be false… Democracies can trample on human rights and the rule of law. Nor can we assume that all nations prefer democracy, however defined, or are moving toward the same destination. Indeed, to diagnose and prescribed remedies for all other people on earth is nothing less than to mirror the Bolsheviks, who claimed to believe that scientific law was moving the world toward Communism, but acted as though history needed their ‘help.’
Americans may well believe that their political and economic principles are universally valid. But to insist that everyone else in the world agree is to embrace the same solipsism that Wilson (president Woodrow Wilson. svh) did when he said that his own depth of belief (een racistisch vorm van protestantisme. svh) convinced that he spoke for the American people. As a result, Global Meliorism can be woefully counterproductive. Far from persuading Chinese, Singaporeans, Iraqis, Libyans, or Russians to be ‘like us,’ our sermons about human rights, fair trade, the environment, and sexual and family issues only invite foreigners to remark on the poverty, crime, drugs, pornography, collapse of the family, inequality, and travesties of justice that characterize American society.
To assert that the U.S. government knows how to transplant democracy and kick-start economic development abroad is an even wilder leap of logic. Our half-century of experience with foreign aid has been almost a total loss, and the reason is not hard to find. It resides in the contradiction inherent in programs which purpose is to demonstrate the superiority of the free market model but whose methods are entirely statist.
Deze realiteit staat mijlenver af van de kinderlijke voorstelling van zaken van opiniemakers als Hofland en Mak. Over de drijfveren van mainstream-opiniemakers verklaarde de Amerikaanse psychologe Frances Shure: ‘Deny the evidence that is coming your way and stick to the original story, the official story and try to regain your equilibrium,’ want
People are afraid of being ostracized, they are afraid of being alienated, they are afraid of being shunned. They are afraid of their lives being inconvenienced – they’ll have to change their lives. They are afraid of being confused. They are afraid of psychological deterioration. They are afraid of feeling helpless and vulnerable. And, they are afraid that they won’t be able to handle the feelings coming up. And none of us wants to feel helpless and vulnerable. So, we want to defend ourselves. And, the way that we often do that is with anger. Then we become angry. And, when we become angry, then we become indignant. We become offended. We want to ridicule the messenger. We want to pathologize the messenger. And, we want to censor the messenger.
De vraag is nu: wat bedoelt H.J.A. Hofland met 'De Tweede Wereldoorlog zal verdwijnen met mijn generatie... onze erfenis zal onherroepelijk verdwijnen. Alles wat we hebben meegemaakt en wat we hebben opgeschreven wordt legende, een zwart-witfoto. Niemand die het nog kan vertellen.' Als er één man is die zijn eigen oorlogsherinneringen is vergeten dan is het de nestor van de polderjournalistiek.En een les heeft hij er ook al niet uit geleerd. Hij zal straks zijn verdwenen, maar dat wil niet zeggen dat 'De Tweede Wereldoorlog zal verdwijnen.' Dat is grootheidswaan. Die oorlog zal tot in lengte der dagen zijn consequenties laten gelden. Niets verdwijnt, alles laat zijn sporen achter. Alleen een klein mens denkt dat met zijn vertrek de wereld ophoudt te bestaan. Vanwaar zijn klagelijke toon, dat zelfmedelijden? Als Hofland de essaybundelThe Curtain van Milan Kundera had gelezen, had hij geweten dat de auteur zichzelf en ons de vraag stelt: 'And If the Tragic Has Deserted Us?'Vervolgens schrijft hij: Hitler not only brought unspeakable horror upon Europe but also stripped it of its sense of the tragic. Like the struggle against Nazism, all of contemporary political history would thenceforth be seen and experienced as a struggle between good and evil... Is this a regression? A relapse into the pre-tragical stage of humankind? But if so, precisely who has regressed? Is it History itself, usurped by criminals? Or is it our mode of understanding History? Often I think: tragedy has deserted us; and that may be the true punishment. Hoflands manicheïsme is, denk ik, inderdaad 'a regression' een 'relapse into the pre-tragical stage of humankind.' Meer later.
America’s Aggressions Rewarded
“The U.S. faces the constant economic crises brought on by collapsing capitalism and uses its muscle to keep others in line.”
By Margaret Kimberley
March 29, 2014 "Information Clearing House - "BAR"- The United States is a military superpower in economic decline. Consequently, its foreign policy resembles that of the mafia extortionist who “offers protection when it is in fact the only threat in the neighborhood.” Old bullies do not fade away; they must be confronted. “Who will insist on punishing the United States?” – by far the “greatest purveyor of violence in the world, today.”
The United States continues to be the worst and most persistent aggressor on the planet in large part because it has paid no price for its crimes. Our government has acted with complete impunity even as it has ravaged countries as disparate as Iraq, Haiti, and Libya with military force and occupations. It has supported proxies to destabilize an elected government in Venezuela and thwart the will of the people in that country. It has ruined the Iranian economy with harsh sanctions and now seeks to do the same with Russia. America has no shame in asserting its right to intervene anywhere it chooses to on the planet, and to punish any other nation with a mistaken belief that it will be allowed to act in its best interests.
In 2003 the United States invaded Iraq under the pretext of bringing democracy and eliminating weapons of mass destruction. The charge that Saddam Hussein was in possession of WMDs was proven to be a bald faced lie and the intent to uphold democracy was an equally atrocious fabrication. Yet America suffered not at all for its deceit or its role in killing hundreds of thousands of people.
After America’s interference overthrew an elected Ukrainian president, Russian president Vladimir Putin drew a red line around his country. Because he stood up to the bully, the United States has decreed that he must be punished. The G8 nations are now the G7 because the United Kingdom, Canada, Japan, Germany, Italy and France all submitted to America’s demand that Putin be kicked out of their club house. The G8 meeting scheduled to be hosted by Putin in Sochi will now be held at the European Union headquarters in Belgium and will have no Russian presence for the first time since 1998.
The appalling arrogance and bullying of the United States is matched only by the obsequiousness of its allies, who never dare take America to task. They certainly could have used the same logic to toss the United States out of the G8 group after the invasion of Iraq, or the occupation of Haiti, or the destruction of Libya, or the ongoing destruction of Syria, but the big criminal goes untouched. They are both afraid of American power and also complicit in its crimes. Their hypocrisy is matched by their cowardice.
Unfortunately, the United States is the most powerful country in the world and it uses its power to crush anyone who dares to stand in its way and Vladimir Putin is the demon du jour. His government gave temporary asylum to another wanted man, Edward Snowden, who committed the crime of revealing the extent of the American security state. When Obama and other NATO leaders sought to intervene directly in Syria and make their “rebels” victorious it was Putin who stood in their way. When NATO subverted the democratically elected president of Ukraine, Russia’s neighbor to the east, Putin told NATO in no uncertain terms that he was having none of it and that defiance made him persona non grata to the United States and its lackeys.
Who will insist on punishing the United States? Where are the calls for boycotts and sanctions? Of course the G7 nations are often partners in crime but they also know that a wounded predator is very dangerous. The U.S. faces the constant economic crises brought on by collapsing capitalism and uses its muscle to keep others in line. It can prevent other countries from dropping the dollar as a reserve currency or exercising their abilities to sell their resources but it isn’t weak enough yet to be opposed without serious consequence.
In popular vernacular, it can be said that the United States is “gangsta.” Like a mafia extortionist it offers protection when it is in fact the only threat in the neighborhood. Russia doesn’t threaten any of the G7 countries. None of them have any reason to fear Putin but they do have reason to fear the orchestrator of the coups and the occupations unless they go along with the shake down.
Not only is Putin punished for stopping the criminality but America is rewarded for committing the crimes. Sanctions and isolation are meant to turn Russia into another Iran, an energy rich nation unable to sell its energy resources. The ultimate winner will be the United States which will have the dubious distinction of dispatching yet another competitor for influence in the world. It also has the distinction of bringing the world to the brink of catastrophic violence. Even in the cold war era the Soviet Union’s prerogatives were accepted as pragmatic realpolitik. Those niceties are no longer respected and American meddling may bring about the conflict which was feared but not realized in the past.
Margaret Kimberley‘s Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR, and is widely reprinted elsewhere. She maintains a frequently updated blog as well as athttp://freedomrider.blogspot.com. Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgendaReport.com
YOKOHAMA, Japan (AP) — In an authoritative report due out Monday a United Nations climate panel for the first time is connecting hotter global temperatures to hotter global tempers. Top scientists are saying that climate change will complicate and worsen existing global security problems, such as civil wars, strife between nations and refugees.
They're not saying it will cause violence, but will be an added factor making things even more dangerous. Fights over resources, like water and energy, hunger and extreme weather will all go into the mix to destabilize the world a bit more, says the report by the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The summary of the report is being finalized this weekend by the panel in Yokohama.
That's a big change from seven years ago, the last time the IPCC addressed how warming affected Earth, said report lead author Chris Field of the Carnegie Institution of Science in California. The summary that political leaders read in early 2007 didn't mention security issues will, he said, because of advances in research.
"There's enough smoke there that we really need to pay attention to this," said Ohio University security and environment professor Geoff Dabelko, one of the lead authors of the report's chapter on security and climate change.
For the past seven years, research in social science has found more links between climate and conflict, study authors say, with the full report referencing hundreds of studies on climate change and conflict.
The U.S. Defense Department earlier this month in its once-every-four-years strategic review, called climate change a "threat multiplier" to go with poverty, political instability and social tensions worldwide. Warming will trigger new problems but also provide countries new opportunities for resources and shipping routes in places such as the melting Arctic, the Pentagon report says.
After the climate panel's 2007 report, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon wrote that along with other causes, the conflict in the Darfur region of western Sudan "began as an ecological crisis, arising at least in part from climate change. " While the IPCC report this year downplays global warming's role in that particular strife, saying other issues were far more influential, the report's drafts do add that there is "justifiable common concern" that climate change increases the risk of fighting in similar circumstances.
"Climate change will not directly cause conflict — but it will exacerbate issues of poor governance, resource inequality and social unrest," retired U.S. Navy Adm. David Titley, now a Pennsylvania State University professor of meteorology, wrote in an email. "The Arab Spring and Syria are two recent examples."
But Titley, who wasn't part of the IPCC report, says "if you are already living in a place affected by violent conflict — I suspect climate change becomes the least of your worries."
That illustrates the tricky calculus of climate and conflict, experts say. It's hard to point at violence and draw a direct climate link — to say how much blame goes to warming and how much is from more traditional factors like poverty and ethnic differences. Then looking into future is even more difficult.
"If you think it's hard to predict rainfall in one spot 100 years from now, it's even harder to predict social stability," said Jeff Severinghaus, a climate scientist at the Scripps Institution for Oceanography who isn't part of this climate panel. "Obviously that's going to be controversial. The most important thing is that it's going to be talked about."
Severinghaus and other scientists say this will be one of the more contentious issues as the panel representing more than 100 nations meets here and edits word-by-word a 30-page summary of the multi-volume report for political leaders. Observers said the closed door meeting went through the security and climate section Sunday, in the hurried last hours of editing.
There's an entire 63-page chapter on security problems, but most leaders will read the handful of paragraphs summarizing that and that's where there may be some issues, he says.
The chapter on national security says there is "robust evidence" that "human security will be progressively threatened as climate changes." It says it can destabilize the world in multiple ways by making it harder for people to make a living, increasing mass migrations, and making it harder for countries to keep control of their populations.
The migration issue is big because as refugees flee storms and other climate problems, that adds to security issues, the report and scientists say
While some climate scientists, environmental groups and politicians see the conflict-climate link as logical and clear, others emphasize nuances in research.
The social science literature has shown an indirect link, especially with making poverty worse, which will add to destabilization, but it is not the same as saying there would be climate wars, said University of Exeter's Neil Adger, one of the study's lead authors. It's not exactly the four horsemen of the apocalypse, he adds.
Joshua Goldstein, an international relations professor and expert on conflict at the University of Massachusetts, sees that link, but says it is probably weaker than people think. It's not as a big a problem as other impacts from climate change, like those on ecosystems, weather disasters and economic costs, he says.
Poverty is the issue when it comes to security problems — and policies to fight climate change increase poverty, says David Kreutzer at the conservative Heritage Foundation in Washington.
But environmental groups such as the Environmental Justice Foundation are issuing reports that dovetail with what the IPCC is saying.
Titley, the retired admiral, holds out hope that if nations deal with climate change jointly, it can bring peace instead of war to battling regions.
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Online:
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: http://www.ipcc.ch
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| by SETH BORENSTEIN
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